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Fireballs light up skies over Cuba, US

Cubans watched in awe as a fireball soared across the twilight sky before exploding — one day after a destructive meteor shower in Russia injured more than 1200 people.

Twitter comments suggest the Cuban meteor was visible from many parts of the island nation around 8pm on Friday — the same day San Francisco residents filmed a ball of fire flying through the sky.

Unidentified locals from the central Cuban city of Rodas said the explosion that followed the meteorite's flight was impressive.

"My home shook completely," a woman told CubaSi.

"I had never heard such a strange thing."

There were no reports of injuries nor damage in Cuba after the incident.

Around the same time on Friday evening people in northern California witnessed a meteorite blazing a trail through the night sky.

Jonathan Braidman, an instructor at the Chabot Space and Science Center in Oakland said what Californians observed was a small piece of asteroid that somehow got on a collision course with earth, a "common occurrence".

"What is uncommon is that it's so close to where people are living," Braidman said.

Both incidents come in the wake of a large meteor shower in Russia's Chelyabinsk that caused extensive damage and injured more than 1200 people.

Officials said the meteor exploded around 10km above Chelyabinsk, releasing almost 500 kilotons of energy — roughly 30 times the size of the nuclear bomb that devastated Hiroshima.